Contrasting perspectives: Cultural studies in Latin America and the United States: A conversation with Nestor Garcia Canclini

In this interview Latin American scholar Nestor Garcia Canclini discusses the emergence of Latin American cultural studies. Garcia Canclini argues that the development of cultural studies specific to Latin America has merit because it provides a multidisciplinary tool for exploring regional relationships between folklore, the rural and the indigenous, the urban and the mass media, and the intersections of social structures and traditions. Differentiating the Latin American perspective from other, more textual orientations, he fields questions concerning the emerging enterprise's theoretical influences, the role of ethnographic enquiry, the place of multiculturalism, the contribution of feminism, its relationship to Chicano scholarship, the influence of changing cultural policies and frustrations of democracy, and its roots in anthropology and sociology.